Ocala Orthopaedic Care News

Based on the symptoms that you describe, it sounds quite possible that your problem is being caused by a herniated disc pressing on your nerves. However, a herniated disc is not the only possible cause of such symptoms.

A common problem that elderly people experience is pain which comes on only when walking. Lying or sitting down is not painful, but attempting to walk can produce pain in the back, the thighs, or the calves.

In most patients with spinal stenosis, a laminectomy is all they need for relief. However, some conditions require something additional for best results: a fusion. I do this procedure at the same time as a laminectomy. Some of your own bone is harvested from a particular area on your pelvis that can spare it safely.

There is a common deformity of the spine that is familiar to very few people, even though it occurs in up to five percent of the population (that’s one person out of twenty). It is called Spondylolisthesis (Spon-di-lo-lis-thee-sis), which is Greek for “slippage of the spine.”

The condition is not dangerous because the slippage almost never progresses once adulthood is reached. Therefore, the treatment is usually aimed towards simply relieving pain. I have had good luck treating this with braces and therapy for muscular strengthening to help restore stability to the lower spine.

Whenever she tried to walk to much, her back would begin to hurt, and then the pain would spread down her legs. If she sat down, the pain would go away. It got slowly worse over the months, to the point where she started giving up golf. That just wouldn’t do!

The vast majority of doctors deserve that trust. However, there have been numerous occasions where a patient will see me in the office and tell me that another doctor has recommended surgery. To be honest, I’m sometimes shocked at some of the explanations why surgery is recommended over conservative treatment.

What is the natural history of scoliosis? Curvatures tend to stop getting bigger once a patient is done growing. Once a girl’s had periods for two years, her curves are unlikely to progress much after that for the rest of her life. The exception to this is if the curve gets bigger than about 50 degrees.

Scoliosis is an abnormal curvature in the spine that some children, mostly girls, develop around 10 to 12 years old. It is almost never painful, except for perhaps a slight ache. Most of the time, it is discovered during a school screening.

Our spines curve naturally in an “S” shape from front to back. This curving gives our spines a springiness that helps absorb shocks as we walk and run. However, our spines are not supposed to curve from side to side.

“Elsa” was a 55 year old woman who came to me two years ago with a great deal of low back pain. She had begun to have pain eight years before that, in her upper back. It had become worse and worse to the point where it was incapacitating.

Until recently, people who had painful sciatica from herniated (in other words, ruptured) disks in their backs have had only one choice if they needed surgery: we made a small one-inch incision, exposed the disk, and removed the herniated portion that was pressing on the nerves and causing the sciatica.

We’ve all awakened with a “crick” in the neck at some point, or sprained it somehow. Fortunately, most all of these pains go away in a few days to weeks. However, it is very common to have neck pain that persists a lot longer.

Most people have had bouts of sciatica at some point in their lives, or have known somebody who did. It consists of pain which starts in the buttock region and radiates down the leg. Most of the time the pain is annoying but not excruciating, and it goes away without much help in a few days to weeks.

The lower back and the hip are close together. Often a patient will present to my office with “hip pain” that turns out to be coming from the back. I also see frequent cases where a patient thinks he is having sciatica but who turns out to have a hip problem. How can you tell the difference?

It is unfortunately not at all uncommon for me to see patients in my office who have had back surgery which either didn’t work at all, or which worked for a while and then pain returned later. It is a complicated topic, and there are several reasons why a back operation may not work.

Most people know that back surgery has a poor reputation for the number of times it fails. Almost everybody knows a relative or friend who had back surgery and who didn’t seem to get better or even got worse.

Whether or not to undergo surgery in your situation depends mainly on your pain level. If it is so bad that your lifestyle has altered, you can’t do the things you love, and you are miserable, then surgery may be a worthwhile risk even if the odds of failure are higher than you might normally accept.

Dr. Lowell is trained in the latest minimally invasive surgical (MIS) techniques for treatment of low back complaints, including use of the iFuse Implant System® from SI-BONE®, Inc., a medical device company pioneering MIS sacroiliac (SI) joint treatment.